Truly, madly, but not quite deeply enough: Massenet’s Werther from English Touring Opera
Goethe’s Sorrows of Young Werther pitted religion against Romanticism in a battle royal for the soul of young Germany, which Romanticism won: Werther became a cult hero, even a fashion icon, to generations of Europeans. Oliver Platt’s reduction of Goethe’s aesthetic manifesto to a kitchen sink drama (played throughout in the same shabby kitchen) gives us a…
